How much should I feed 2 large tangs?

Aardvark1134

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So someone near me had 2 tangs a Salfin desjardinii 6.5 inches and Blue tang (Dory) 5 inches out grow their 150Gallon tank and traded them in for smaller ones. So I gave them a home in my 360 Gallon. The only issue how much do these guys eat?

I am feeding the tank an extra 3 frozen cubes a day and extra full sheet of nori just for these 2 additions every day. Every meal they act like they haven't been fed in a week. Are they just lying about being hungry or am I actually not feeding them enough?

I don't want to stave them but I don't want them so fat they can barely swim either. Right now they are close to being fat.
 

Rmckoy

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I believe they don’t know when to stop and as long as there is food , they will eat. .

provide seaweed as you are . For them to graze on .

how are nutrient levels ?
As long as they’re in check I wouldn’t worry about it being too much .
 

jda

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That is probably not enough. Mix in some high quality pellets like New Life Spectrum and cut back on the nori. I never found nori to be a great food for a staple. This is hard to gauge, but you need to feed them enough so that they are thick and growing, but of course, you cannot see growth on a day by day basis.
 

vetteguy53081

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Feed what they can consume in 5 min or so. I thaw food in a liitle solo cup and spoon feed. Easier to add food than to remove. Whats left over can go in fridge.

They are herbivores and recommended foods are:

-Spirulina brine shrimp
- LRS Herbivore diet
- mysis shrimp
- small plankton
- Nori seaweed basted with garlic extract
- Hikari Marine cuisine
- Formula 2 flake and frozen
- Hikari veggie marine

Add selcon vitamins to the foods 2-3X per week and on alternating days, garlic extract for stamina and immunity health
 

Tamberav

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I feed LRS, nori and live worms. Fish look great and everything that is in pairs spawns.

I don’t really use any of the additives or heavily processed foods. I don’t find it necessary and I know processed foods for other animals isn’t best choice so don’t really subscribe to fish food being different.

You should really check out LRS :) It would likely be a lot more filling than mysis.
 

jda

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FWIW, I feed NLS pellets on autofeeder 3x per day. Then add in mysis, pacific plankton or some of the Brine Shrimp Direct reef mix once a day in huge portions (like where some is on the bottom) since I want them to eat some of it in 15-20 minutes and/or feed the crabs and shrimp. Every once in a while, I put a full sheet of nori in there, but not routinely.
 

Jmcg89

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My hippo definitely thickened up when I started feeding more pellets and cut back the nori some.
I have a powder brown and a hippo and they get rods original and mysis daily and hikari pellets daily as well as nori when ever I feel like it, every day or couple days.
The powder brown stays thick from eating algae id assume which the hippo doesent touch.
 

DrZoidburg

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I've always gone with the rule 4-10% of body weight in 24hrs. This depends a lot on what fish. Like anthias or smaller young fish need 3-6 feedings a day. Cichlids another example a lot less because the have long digestive tracts. Tank I have with tangs gets 1-2 cubes frozen a day early. Then 1-2 times nori after 12pm. Randomly 2 feedings, and sometimes 3-4 a day. These guys are fat probably don't need as much as I give them.
 

Miami Reef

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Variety is best. My favorite food of all time is LRS fish frenzy. I’ve gotten the most finicky “expert only” fish to feed on them. It’s very caloric dense too. I do not like LRS herbivore frenzy. IMO you are paying for empty nori calories. It’s significantly lower in calories than the fish frenzy formula.

Pellets are good, the only problem is that most delicate fish will not feed on them. If you are lucky to have fish that will, by all means go for it! I have nothing against prepared foods and I believe it is formulated to be adequate for the dietary recommendations of most fish.
 

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Off topic, but I do not believe in supplements for fish (selcon etc). Most foods already have all the vitamins needed for fish health. I personally don’t see much (if at all) benefits to adding them.

How do we know if selcon sticks to the frozen food itself and not just floats away as soon as it hits the water? Pellets would be a much better food to mix these supplements.

Ps. I am not a fish nutrition expert. I just like to google in my free time.
 

secret_reefer337

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How much food, hard to tell. I have mostly tang in my tank and I feed LRS fish frenzy in the morning, nori the whole day (in a clip) and Hikari Herbivore mix with SA Aquatics pellets 4x a day in a auto feeder.

I have to train them to eat pellets in case nobody is home to feed them.
 
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Aardvark1134

Aardvark1134

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Well getting to eat something isn't an issue...they eat everything they eat Formula 2 pelets and flakes, nori, all 6 types of frozen I have they eat anything and everything I put in there. Except the algae on the rocks...
 

nereefpat

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There's some ripping on nori. That stuff is a great food. It's full of protein, A-C-and B vitamins. Lots of carbs that aren't fiber. Some call it vegetable matter, but it's nutritionally nothing like the vegetables we eat.

My opinion is to feed frozen or flake/pellets a couple times a day, enough that it takes them a couple minutes each time, and have some nori available.

Side note: 'blue tangs'/pacific blue/regal are mostly not algae eaters like other tangs. They are plankton eaters... so Mysis, brine, krill etc.
 

NoahLikesFish

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Variety is best. My favorite food of all time is LRS fish frenzy. I’ve gotten the most finicky “expert only” fish to feed on them. It’s very caloric dense too. I do not like LRS herbivore frenzy. IMO you are paying for empty nori calories. It’s significantly lower in calories than the fish frenzy formula.

Pellets are good, the only problem is that most delicate fish will not feed on them. If you are lucky to have fish that will, by all means go for it! I have nothing against prepared foods and I believe it is formulated to be adequate for the dietary recommendations of most fish.
 

jda

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A long time ago at a show, a biologist told us that the fish have a hard time with Nori and most goes undigested - he spoke against bananas, zucchini, etc. as staples at the time too even though fish love them. I have no idea if this is true and I cannot even remember who gave the talk (it was a big name, but I am blanking). Maybe dogma, but I always remembered this and used it as a supplment to other foods. I have noticed better growth, color and less aggressive fish feeding a lot of high quality pellets instead of nori, which always led me to believe that this could have been true. I don't really know, but that is why I use it as a supplement instead of a main course. It is cheap, easy to feed (not as easy as pellets, but nothing is) and the fish love it, so I am happy to rethink things.

Off topic, but I had a larger Pink Tail Trigger once that was in my reef tank and was mostly reef safe. It would eat a whole large sheet in about a minute... bringing it in, spitting it out, bringing it in, spitting it out a few times until it was all down the hatch. Most of it would come out as poo looking very much like it went it as raw chewed up pieces of nori and the other fish loved to scurry over there and eat it with a gusto. I wonder if he started to digest it for them. It was plenty gross. :)
 

nereefpat

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A long time ago at a show, a biologist told us that the fish have a hard time with Nori and most goes undigested - he spoke against bananas, zucchini, etc. as staples at the time too even though fish love them. I have no idea if this is true and I cannot even remember who gave the talk (it was a big name, but I am blanking). Maybe dogma, but I always remembered this and used it as a supplment to other foods. I have noticed better growth, color and less aggressive fish feeding a lot of high quality pellets instead of nori, which always led me to believe that this could have been true. I don't really know, but that is why I use it as a supplement instead of a main course. It is cheap, easy to feed (not as easy as pellets, but nothing is) and the fish love it, so I am happy to rethink things.

Off topic, but I had a larger Pink Tail Trigger once that was in my reef tank and was mostly reef safe. It would eat a whole large sheet in about a minute... bringing it in, spitting it out, bringing it in, spitting it out a few times until it was all down the hatch. Most of it would come out as poo looking very much like it went it as raw chewed up pieces of nori and the other fish loved to scurry over there and eat it with a gusto. I wonder if he started to digest it for them. It was plenty gross. :)
I agree about the fruits and veggies. Seaweed is different though. It doesn't have the fiber, and the protein is way higher. I bet the speaker wasn't Sprung, because he sells the stuff :)

Pellets (and flake, even though people seem to never use it) is great for putting on mass, and for adding nutrients. That stuff is dense, with no water. And it's basically a complete/varied diet all wrapped up in one food.

I don't think someone should only feed nori to tangs, for example. It is a good food though.
 

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91A7490E-1A76-4DA3-B2CC-FD3647067DCF.jpeg

Lots of great comments on this thread!

I use the K.I.S.S. method. About 8-10 times throughout the day (roughly 9 am - 9 pm), I throw a bit of food in— not enough to go uneaten. A random daily variety of pellets, flakes, mysis, brine, bloodworms, silversides, shrimp, fish eggs, Nori and a Mussel on the half-shell. Everyone is plump and enjoying a good swim. ;)
 

jda

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It was not Sprung - I would likely remembered that. I remembered one more thing about feeding lots of Nori is that it lacks HUFA and Vitamin E, which used to be suspected of HLLE issues. It needed soaked in Selcon and Zoe, if people go back this far. This has mostly been mitigated lately by high quality pellets and mysis being available. People that only feed Nori to their tangs, and there are some, will still likely have these issues.

I still use lots of flake. I buy it in 3 gallon buckets. The fish love it and it is messy and feeds my crabs and shrimp, which keeps them happy, not eating my corals and doing their jobs of eating aiptasia, bubble algae and the like.
 

NowGlazeIT

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I've always gone with the rule 4-10% of body weight in 24hrs. This depends a lot on what fish. Like anthias or smaller young fish need 3-6 feedings a day. Cichlids another example a lot less because the have long digestive tracts. Tank I have with tangs gets 1-2 cubes frozen a day early. Then 1-2 times nori after 12pm. Randomly 2 feedings, and sometimes 3-4 a day. These guys are fat probably don't need as much as I give them.
Hmm maybe I should try this with my dog some time.
1638483371359.gif
 

Miami Reef

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I doubt the claims from the biologist regarding nori not being good for fish. The nori I have is dried kelp, which is exactly what the fish I keep would eat in the wild, at least that’s what I think they eat.
 

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